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Businesses are crucial to solving
the UK’s productivity problems.

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productivity means for business

Businesses are crucial to solving
the UK’s productivity problems.

Business

Northern Ireland Productivity Forum

Northern Ireland is home to 1.8 million people. Its traditional industrial economy, most notably in shipbuilding, rope manufacture and textiles, has largely been replaced by services and it is consistently one of the least productive regions of the UK. Its output per hour in 2018 was 15.6% below the UK average, third from bottom among the 12 UK regions.

Northern Ireland’s Productivity Challenge: Exploring the issues

Find out more about the historic context, key issues and future research priorities of productivity in Northern Ireland in our insights paper, which sits alongside an executive summary: a high-level overview highlighting its productivity picture, including a scattergraph showing the disparities on a NUTS3 level in comparison with the UK average, the primary drivers and bottlenecks, a SWOT analysis and a look to the future.

Insights Paper

Executive Summary

Key Contacts

Professor John Turner

Northern Ireland Forum Lead
Queen's University Belfast

Dame Rotha Johnston DBE

Northern Ireland Forum Chair
Entrepreneur

David Jordan

Northern Ireland Forum Contact
Queen's University Belfast
d.jordan@qub.ac.uk

Committee

Ann Morgan

Retired Chief Executive

Ann Watt

Pivotal

Cara Haffey

PwC

Conor Lambe

Dankse Bank

David Paulson

Queen's University Belfast

David Watson

Senior Advisor, Ryobi Aluminium Casting Ltd. (Retired MD)

Esmond Birnie

Ulster University Business School

Graeme Wilkinson

Department for the Economy Northern Ireland

Graham Brownlow

Queen's University Belfast

John Healey

Allstate Northern Ireland

John Irwin

Denroy Plastics

Julie McCandless

Queen's University Belfast

Lisa Wilson

Nevin Economic Research Institute

Louise Warde Hunter

Belfast Metropolitan College

Nola Hewitt-Dundas

Queen's University Belfast

Richard Ramsey

Ulster Bank

Simon Hamilton

Belfast Chamber of Trade and Commerce

Stephen Kelly

Manufacturing Northern Ireland

Paul MacFlynn

Nevin Economic Research Institute

Insights

Funding call for research proposals to better understand business leader decision making around productivity

Productivity Commission – call for written evidence

Northern Ireland is poorest performing UK region for productivity